28 Day Cleaning/Organizing Challenge (Day 11 - Master Closet)

His Side

Her Side

 If you see into another person's closet...does it reflect their soul???  Hopefully, in my case - not.

So, it's gotten a little out of hand in there.  Ordinarily, I'm pretty tidy behind these doors. For me, all my clothes are in here (I don't have a bureau).  However, this isn't his whole wardrobe.  Probably because the size of his items are larger, he also needs 6 drawers of furniture (which, you'll see at a later date).  I'm not bitter...nooooo.  Honestly, having minimal clothing makes my life easier.  I don't like choices, they cloud my judgment.  I digress...

Anyway, as you can see the closet is divided up into quadrants:

     HER SIDE:
          Containers:
               Socks, Handbags/Belts, Lingerie/Bathing Suits,

               Underwear/Bras, Sleeveless TShirts, and Shorts

          Shelves:

               Long Sleeve, Short Sleeve and Sleeveless TShirts,
               Sweats/Yoga Pants and Jeans
          Hanging:
               Sportswear, Capris, Pants and Skirts
               Dresses, Button-Up Sweaters, Pullover Sweaters,
               Button-Down Shirts and Sleeveless Camis
          Shoes

  HIS SIDE:

       Containers:

             Ankle Socks, Socks, and Ties

       Shelves:

             Sweats, Thermals, Jeans, Long Sleeved Shirts and 

             Sweaters

       Hanging:

             Sportswear, Long Sleeved Dress Shirts, and 

             Golf Shirts

             Work - Pullovers, Sweaters, Button Down Shirts, 

             Golf Shirts and Pants

       Shoes

Here are the finished products:

His Side

Her Side

When organizing, I place items on the shelves by color.  The end result looks fabulous!!!

(There were items that were removed and will be donated.  Sadly, a few pairs of shoes wound up in the bag.  Sniff, sniff.)

28 Day Cleaning/Organizing Challenge (Day 10 - Toy Chest)

When you turn the lights out...they multiply.  Toys, toys everywhere!!!

               

Well, if you are like me, you'd like to tame the beast.  The pictures above are really only a few piles that we have around the house.  My mission is to keep them in two places, separated per child (we have a schoolager and infant).  

Certain toys, need to be kept away from little hands.  To remedy this, I use containers with a locking mechanism.  Items are placed with like items; for example there are containers for: games (2), cars, super heroes/villains, action figures, mini action figures and LEGOS.

Toys that aren't going to get swallowed go in a basket for easy access. 

Valentines Day Idea (Schoolager/non-card)

In our already busy lives, its hard to keep up with the Jones. Personally, I've probably seen a hundred cute ideas of something unique to send in with our schoolager. But, who am I kidding??? With an infant in the house, I'm lucky my socks match - wait, if I have CLEAN socks - everyday. In an effort to avoid store bought (not that there is anything wrong with that), I came up with the following idea:

 

Start to finish it took me 20 minutes to put these together.  After finding cute clipart and printing out on mailing labels, all I had to do is peel and stick...I think they turned out really ed-ib...er uh, cute.

28 Day Cleaning/Organizing Challenge (Day 9 - Laundry Room)

I'm not a big fan of where our laundry room is...in the basement.  Every time I go down there, a thought passes through my mind - dungeon.  Maybe that is why I don't really ever pay much attention to how it looks.  There are times when I feel like it should be cleaned up but it really takes a lot for me to get there.

This is what it looks like:

You'd think that having gotten beautiful new machines would spur me to keep things up, but it doesn't.  So having this on my To Do List was a good thing.

I straightened up the washing/drying products on the top and put down a towel so that they don't scratch the machine's finish.  In the 8 years we've lived here, I've never cleaned the utility sink so it was time to do that too.  Who knew that the reason the water flow from the spigot was at a drizzle because the screen needed to be cleaned of sediment???  When all was done, this is what it looks like:

A few plastic bins keep the dryer sheets, Oxy-Clean and sprays together.  What I think is my piece de la resistance is our laundry sorting area.  This is what it looks like:

 I separate clothes into darks, jeans, lights, whites, reds and linens...there are some who think this is crazy but I take washing like things together very seriously.

There have been a few things that I saw on Pinterest where people have built a laundry center where the baskets slide in/out and I would LOVE to have something like that...I can dream right???

28 Day Cleaning/Organizing Challenge (Day 8 - Desk)

We don't have a desk, per say, in our house.  I do, however, keep most of the stationary and art supplies in a kitchen cabinet.  As you can see:

  
it is a distant cousin to our junk drawer!  They are on the catch-all side of the family...

When we decided to include this area in the challenge, I knew it'd take me some time to get through this one...the finished product, totally worth it:

and it looks so good!  In organizing, I put like items together (quadrants again) into Ziploc containers (which I had already been using to some degree).  I have to admit, there is less stuff in there...went through and got rid of a few things, put the extra bins under the kitchen sink with the others form earlier this week and then, I also did this:

it's kind of a display of the art supplies we use often, in some glass that I had in the china hutch and empty jars (reuse/recycle at its best).  I figure it will be better for our school-ager to have access when he is working on a project, without the need to pull over a chair and climb up for things.  I have some other glassware that display things around the kitchen like coffee, utensils, etc. so it matches nicely.

Here are two things I also do that are stationary related:

I keep a stock of school
supplies for any last
minute need for them.
Nothing worse than
needing to make a
midnight run for pencils!

Ever have a last minute
need for a birthday card
or the like?  Buy a few
cards for different
occasions and keep them
together for when you are
in a pinch!

28 Day Cleaning/Organizing Challenge (Day 7 - Books/DVDs/Video Games)

Oddly now, I've begun looking forward to and would consider myself almost excited about each upcoming day's challenge.  Something is wrong with me, I may need a doctor.  "Hello, my name is Closet Housewife and I've become addicted to organizing."  Maybe its the gratification I get looking at the accomplishments made over the last week...it's addicting.  Who knew?

Today's task was especially important in my house.  I knew I'd have to think in the box as opposed to out side of it...because, as you can see, we have a large collection of books and movies for the kids (not so much video games but they are lumped into today's task).  It's baffling, honestly. 

 




Imagine having these things scattered throughout the house...





When I started putting items into piles it became evident that central storage was important.

BOOKS
Were separated out by reading level.  There is a pretty large age gap between our kids so I put things for each child in bins and then there was an "in between" one.  Our closets have shelving units (you will see in an upcoming blog) that have room enough to store each "library" since we don't have book cases.

MOVIES 

Were alphabetized and put into bins.  We don't have a large TV stand or bookcase in the family room so (you will see in an upcoming blog) that they are then being stored in our foyer closet.

VIDEO GAMES 

Also alphabetized and put into a bin.  They are, however, stored in the TV stand since it is a smaller collection and will fit along with the controls and console.

Here is what they all look like when we were done parsing through and taking out things that could be donated or sold at an upcoming consignment swap:

 

TIP/HINT: I purposefully used clear bins so that you could still see-through and find the title you were looking for without having to open each one.

 

It was so nice to get these items in order, what was even better...having the school-ager help and realize the importance of putting/keeping things in order and taking stock of the items he thought were worth keeping.  I found out a book "reminds him of me" and therefore, couldn't be donated...never, ever. 

28 Day Cleaning/Organizing Challenge (Day 6 - Medicine Cabinet)

Because I'm always outside of the box, our medicine actually occupies a shelf in the kitchen.  Mind blowing, I know.  Maybe it's the mom in me, but I like being able to see and know when some one's in there and it's location provides me a level of comfort, knowing its high above where little hands can't easily reach.  Another reason, real estate...honestly, I don't think there is anyway I'd be able to cram all this stuff into that little thing above our bathroom sinks, nor is there a way to organize or keep things from falling off those narrow little shelves.

I had a head start, all the items were kept in plastic Ziploc containers (make-shift pull out shelving at its best/would love to buy bigger locking ones - see them in my future).  So I began this task simply by going through all the items and checking expiration dates.  Some of the items were close enough and I had duplicates, they got trashed.  I found a few more plastic cups like the green one in the above-picture and used them to hold small like items together.  Then I began to quadrant things.  Here are the four I came up with that suit our needs:

Wound Care/Grooming; Sunscreen/Bug Spray; Over the Counter and Vitamins.

In doing this task, I also realized that we need peroxide the next time we go food shopping and that one of the thermometers needs a new battery.  A more regular check through of these items is probably necessary, I'm thinking every 4 months or so...we don't always use the medicines before they should be de-shelved and SOMEONE doesn't always tell me when we need replenishing...I won't name names, but I'm sure you can imagine.